


it was always burning

by sibyllinear



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sibyllinear/pseuds/sibyllinear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a truth that goes unsaid about Natasha, and it’s this: no one will ever really trust her again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was always burning

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sharmie (feministfangirl) for the lovely art! Also, thanks to Kim (nottonyharrison) for running this mini-bang and Mediavengers.
> 
> (And yes, the title is from 'We Didn't Start the Fire')

 

 

There’s a trick to finding messages on the internet: know what you’re looking for, and don’t look for anything in particular. This is how Natasha spends a lot of time scrolling through her rss feed. There’s an update to a wikkipedia article about _Ivan Ivanovich_. The update is false information. On its own the update would be nothing, but it is not on its own. It is the beginning of a cyber trail including a few other articles edited for inaccuracy including one in Russian about cannibalism in spiders, which is how Natasha knows without doubt that whoever is writing the message intends it for her. There are several more wikkipedia articles after that in various languages that eventually lead to reddit, where Natasha has to sift through pages of mind-numbing comments before finding the one she’s looking for, which leads to another forum, which leads to another, which eventually leads to a nondescript account on LiveJournal. The LiveJournal account is empty except for a single locked entry in the user’s journal.

( _Dear Sister_ , it begins.)

 

 

  
  
There’s an attack Midtown and it’s nearly over by the time Natasha arrives. But she does manage to render at least a couple of the would-be-terrorists unconscious, which is fun. Especially considering most of her time these days is spent analyzing endless files and contemplating major plastic surgery to change her facial structure.

Stark smirks at her from where he’s hovering. “You should move into Stark Tower. That way you don’t have to take the subway every time something happens.”

“I didn’t take the subway.” Natasha says. It was a Quinjet, then a taxi. “And I’m not moving into that monstrosity you call your tower.”

“Aw, that hurts.” Stark doesn’t look even slightly fazed. “The rest of the team already lives there. It’ll be fun. We can have slumber parties.”

One of the goons tries to jump her then, apparently not as unconscious as he had initially seemed. A particularly forceful blow to the head fixes that, and then Natasha’s attention returns to Stark. “Stark, there is no way in hell that I am ever going to move into the tower.” 

 

 

  
Pepper Potts hires people to do PR crap for the Avengers Initiative, which means the team actually has to get together fairly often and talk about horrifying things such as who they’re all allegedly having sex with that week and the pros and cons of mooncups compared with tampons.

“About these movies,” one of the PR people says. “It would be really good publicity for you all if--” He’s cut off before he can finish by a chorus of varyingly rudely-worded versions of ‘no.’

“Not being overly involved with the films is alright, but you all need to do something to maintain your image while the movies have renewed the public’s scrutiny.” His partner, at least, seems to have anticipated their lack of cooperation. “It’s not entertainment to you, you lived through it. That’s fine. But right now and for the foreseeable future it is impossible for you lot to avoid the media attention entirely. Therefore we absolutely must control the message being put out.”

Natasha wonders if she could simply stay on the helicarrier for the next twenty years. Clint gives her a look that tells her he’s wondering the same thing. Steve, however, seems both resigned to their fate and used to this. “What about some sort of charity work, then?" Steve says. "We could help out at VA centers.”

“Would probably just make it harder for the people who need help to get in.” Bruce points out.

Steve frowns. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

“We were thinking of something along those lines, though,” the PR woman continues. “We’d like to arrange some charity functions for the Avengers to sponsor. Specifically, something to honor the first responders and benefit charities focused on rebuilding the city and helping the families of the deceased.”

Stark makes a noise of protest. “I gave the city five billion dollars for rebuilding.”

“Which was extremely generous. But what everyone in the world really wants right now is to see that their heroes are still here, and that you will continue to be their heroes.” 

 

 

  
After the Chitauri invasion, Natasha is assigned baby S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to coddle, like she’s their _Phil_ or something. It was framed as a promotion but she’s not stupid. Natasha’s greatest strength was her anonymity. The title Black Widow may have been notorious in certain circles, but never her face.

Now she’ll be recognized wherever she goes. 

 

 

  
Natasha remembers Ksenia in details. They kept her hair dark, but the peach fuzz near her temples was always light. Like Natasha and all the others, Ksenia did not keep material possessions, but in the common room there was an Ella Fitzgerald album only Ksenia would put on the old record player. They sent Natasha and Ksenia out together several times over the years but they were never partners.

 

 

  
  
Natasha jumps on the earliest opportunity to get to Northern Europe.

Agent Hill raises an eyebrow. “You’re actually requesting this mission?”

“I’ve been stateside for three consecutive months. And I have three baby agents who need to learn how to work together.”

“Please refrain from referring to your assets as ‘baby agents,’ Agent Romanoff,” Hill says. The effectiveness of the reprimand is lessened somewhat by the agents in question, when two of them begin to squabble over first use of a new piece of tech while the third casually slips it away from them to use herself.

Hill sighs. “Alright, then. The four of you need to be in Stockholm ASAP. But Romanoff,” She fixes Natasha with another pointed look. “Keep your head down. Natalie Rushman—the Black Widow—she can’t be there.”

 

 

  
  
The details of the charity ball she’s “sponsoring” are sitting in the inbox of one of her throwaway personal email accounts. It’s going to be loud and bright and widely talked about. People are going to take pictures of her and talk about her hair and dress and make-up and sex life. And all of that doesn’t bother her so much as the thought that people think they know her now. She’s Natalie Rushman, now. It’s the cover she has to live from now on. 

 

 

  
Natasha splits from her junior officers once they get to Stockholm, citing a need for anonymity. She sets up camp in a separate motel from them and arranges everything so that they can carry out the mission with minimal on-site direction from her. The whole business should take less than two weeks, and Natasha only needs two days to herself to get to Ksenia, help solve the problem, extract her, and get back to Stockholm.

As soon as the baby-agents are absorbed in their tasks and appear to be on track, Natasha secures her station and has everything forwarded to her StarkPad. She puts on trousers and a heavy overcoat, smears on an unflattering shade of lipstick, ties a scarf tightly over her hair, and catches the night ferry out of Stockholm.  


 

 

Natasha downloads fuzzy, illegal copies of _The Tower_ and _Zero-Sum Game_ off the internet, even though the studios had sent all the Avengers complimentary copies. She watches them both twice as the ferry moves steadily across the Baltic Sea. It’s strange to see the events this way, so close to the truth in some ways and so far removed from the reality of it all.

 

 

  
  
Natasha meets Ksenia in Riga, where Ksenia is letting rooms from a sour but unquestioning greengrocer. The flat is right above the storefront, and the stairs to it are in the back, half-hidden by dusty boxes of toiletries in the storage-room. Natasha pockets a box of hair dye as she passes.

“If a fire were to break out,” Natasha says when Ksenia answers the door, “You would likely die.”

Ksenia smiles, almost managing not to look nervous. But Natasha still remembers her tells.

“Planning to light one, Natashenka?”

“Not today.”

Ksenia laughs, low and bitter. “Thank you for coming.”

 

 

  
  
Ksenia’s in trouble with a man. He’s a former partner or a former lover, most likely both, as best Natasha can tell without asking. Natasha doesn’t ask because it doesn’t matter. She and Ksenia were forged together in the Red Room, and Natasha may have turned her back on the cause but she hasn’t turned her back on her sisters.

They dispatch him quietly and destroy the body.

 

 

  
  
Natasha helps Ksenia bleach her hair and then dye it a honey gold. It’s not her natural color, but it’s closer to it than Natasha has ever seen it before. Natasha reshapes Ksenia’s eyebrows, but they decide against attempting to dye them. She snips the ends of her hair off until it’s a sleek, businesslike bob.

Natasha hands over documents and cards. “I haven’t looked at them.”

They wipe down the tiny flat quickly but methodically, just as they were trained. 

 

 

  
There’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. black-site just outside Gdansk, or Natasha would direct Ksenia to stay in the Old Town for a few days. Instead, she leaves Ksenia in Ystad and travels by train back to Stockholm.

Ksenia kisses her on both cheeks and grips her hand tightly for a moment. They do not say goodbye. Natasha doubts they will ever see each other again.

She’s back in Stockholm less than two days after leaving. 

 

 

  
Baby-agent #3 screws up and the job almost goes pear-shaped until #1 and #2 come to his rescue. Natasha is torn between thinking they’re adorable and wanting to smother them all. Instead, she pretends they don’t exist on the return flight to the U.S.

She’s pointedly ignoring the mutual admiration society forming opposite her as she scrolls through her back-up, throwaway work email account and her rss feed on the split screen of her StarkPad when something catches her eye. There’s a memo about the deaths of several agents (unfortunate; hazard of the job; condolences; etc.) and an article in the _Baltic Daily_ about a brief fire on the outskirts Gdansk that destroyed several warehouses.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was attacked. S.H.I.E.L.D. was attacked, and they aren’t acknowledging it. There’s something seriously wrong.

 

 

  
The bridge of the helicarrier is as busy and as loud as usual, but there’s a certain tension among some of the senior agents. Natasha is debriefed along with her baby-agents about the Stockholm mission and then summarily dismissed. Whatever’s wrong is above her clearance level, then. There’s a word she doesn’t want to think, let alone speak: mole.

 

 

  
  
She spends her days training her baby-agents and writing summaries of data and advice on action. It’s mind-numbingly boring and made all the more frustrating by knowing that something is rotten within S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

 

  
  
Natasha decides to treat the charity ball as a mission.

She can’t ever work undercover again, but she can do this. She can walk down the red carpet and be Natalie Rushman: The Black Widow for everyone to see. She can wear the costume and the mask of The Black Widow the same way she did on all her missions, the same way those actresses did when they were pretending to be her in their films. She will convince the people frightened of whatever happens next that she’s The Black Widow, and that she’s an Avenger, and that the Avengers will save the world or die trying. She will convince her enemies of this, too. She draws her eyeliner sharp, paints her lips red, and wears a tight black dress that won’t hinder her ability to snap necks with her thighs--she knows this because she’s practiced those moves in it. 

 

  
The red carpet is daunting. It’s too bright and people scream at her for attention.

 _It would be very simple_ , she thinks, _for someone to kill her right there_. She’s a nearly perfect target like this. Instead of running or taking cover, she smiles as wide as she can manage without snarling and pauses for the photographers.

“Miss Rushman! What are your thoughts on—”

“—dating your teammate—”

“—rumors about your involvement with—”

Part of trying to get good PR for the team is answering some of their questions. Natasha knows this, but it doesn’t make the idea any more palatable.

She moves closer to the entrance of the building where Stark is hosting the party, but also closer to the barricade holding back the reporters. There’s a baby-faced journalist not quite at the front of the mass who looks a little like Baby-agent #2. Natasha focuses on him, quirking an eyebrow. The other reporters quiet a little, not completely, but they want to hear his question and her answer.

 

 

 

  
Tony Stark, for all his many and varied faults, knows how to throw a party. Or at least, he knows who to pay to throw a party.

The lights are low, the band is on-tempo, and the alcohol is flowing. The only way the event could be better is if Natasha did not have to be there.

Natasha tries to circulate through the room, speaking with small groups of people only long enough to be charming. She smiles a lot and says very little. From what she can tell of her teammates, Steve is doing the same while Tony and Thor are each separately holding court, both surrounded by admirers. Bruce and Clint are in hiding.

Pepper Potts manages to catch up to Natasha as she’s slipping away from a hedge fund manager, her husband, and an illustrator of children’s books. Potts looks typically elegant. Her mouth doesn’t even move from the smile she has it fixed in when she talks. “I hope you prepared a speech?”

“I have,” Natasha says. “I would prefer not to deliver it.”

Potts wrinkles her nose. “I know, I’m sorry, but I had people crunch numbers and you and Steve are the best options.”

Natasha nods and goes to wait in an anteroom off the main stage while Potts strides away to collect Steve from a cluster of geriatric admirers.

A few minutes later, Steve slips into the small room looking about as enthusiastic as she feels. That is: not at all.

“Guess it’s you and me again, huh?” Steve says. “We should coordinate before we get up there.”

“‘Thank you for your dedication.’”

“What?” Steve blinks.

“My speech,” Natasha explains. “The PR people Potts brought in said keep it simple and heartfelt.”

Steve grins. “Well, that qualifies. I think they meant more than one line, though.”

“Likely” Natasha says, and shrugs. “But all the speeches they wrote for me were asinine.”

“We’ll make do, then.”

 

  
  
Later, after an uncomfortable ten minutes on stage, Clint finally appears while Natasha is chatting with a group of firemen who were on duty during the Battle of New York. One of the firemen is talking about how arsonists have patterns and M.O.s the same way serial killers do, and Clint smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Oh yeah, Natalie knows all about starting fires, don’t you, Nat?” It’s a joke, it seems innocuous; it isn’t. Clint, making a joke connecting her however tangentially with arson, in public--

The firemen all laugh like he’s made a sex joke about her. They probably think he has.

Natasha knows better.

She smiles widely. “I haven’t a clue what you mean.”

Clint’s eyes are hard. “Don’t you?”

Oh.

 

 

  
  
There’s a truth that goes unsaid about Natasha, and it’s this: no one will ever really trust her again.

It doesn’t matter that The Red Room was a sadistic excuse for medical experimentation on orphans. It doesn’t matter that Natasha has dedicated the last fifteen years of her life to S.H.I.E.L.D. Natasha is a spy who _defected_. It doesn’t matter that her cause was unworthy of her loyalty. She’s a traitor. All the baby agents and the high-level missions and the times Fury has grinned at her and patted her on the back ( _good work, Agent_ ) don’t matter. S.H.I.E.L.D. is never going to forget where she came from and who she was (is).

 

 

  
  
In the early hours of the morning, just as Natasha is arriving back at her tiny quarters on the helicarrier, when her Initiative phone chirps. The message is a single word from an unknown number that will never appear in her phone again.

**_assemble_ **  


 

 

Natasha takes down five guys on the way in through the basement tunnel, but the sounds of the real fight are coming from several floors above. Tony, Thor, and Clint came in from above so that’s probably them. Steve and Bruce nod to her, and rush off to help. Bruce’s eyes are tinged green, but she’s fairly certain they’ll make it to the lobby before the Hulk takes over.

Natasha winds her way to where they think the command center is for whatever operation this. She uses her Widow’s Bites liberally, dropping men easily as she makes her way down a wide hallway.

A group of heavily armed reinforcements rush from the double doors at the end of the hall. There’s a moment when the whole world seems to stop, even though Natasha knows it’s really spinning as fast as it always does. She can see the men circling, their weapons and their anger, and most of all their ambition. They want to take The Black Widow, the Avenger, alive as a hostage. They want a win. Natasha takes several of them down before she lets in a blow aimed at her head. She drops, unconscious before she hits the floor.

 

  


 

They will never trust her, but she can do this. She can find the mole.

 

 

  
  
HYDRA lives up to its name: everything that’s happening is a result of resurgence in their power. A new HYDRA splinter group has risen to power.

The attack in Midtown, Ksenia’s former lover/partner tracking her down, the mission that almost went sideways in Stockholm, the black-site that burnt to the ground with good agents inside—it’s all because of the new head of the monster.

“And you will take the fall for this, because of your sentimentality,” taunts the man looming over her. “You had to help your little friend. And you have a history of starting fires, don’t you, Natasha Romanoff? You see, your masters will think you were a traitor all along and our agent will continue playing games in the heart of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

And there it is: the identity of their mole.

Galaga.

The HYDRA operative is still gloating but she tunes him out. She doesn’t need him anymore.

The next time he leans in too close to breathe on her face (he must think it’s intimidating, but really he just needs better oral hygiene) she bites his nose, hard, before slamming him with the chair she’s tied to.

She sends out a signal to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. base, and the HYDRA operation is swarmed by agents in less than twenty minutes.

 

 

  
  
The agent who always plays Galaga at his station is whisked away somewhere unpleasant before Natasha’s even en route back to the helicarrier. The debriefing when she arrives lasts an entire day; she repeats the story over and over again before she’s finally dismissed to her room.

Clint’s sitting cross-legged on her bed when she comes in. “You believed in me,” he says. “When everyone thought I’d been turned by Loki.”

 _Yes, because you’re my friend_ she thinks. And: _I wish you could have done the same for me._

“Yes.”

“I thought it was you.”

“I know.”

There’s nothing more to say.

 

 

  
  
Natasha wants nothing more than to crawl into her bunk and sleep until she’s on-duty again. She doesn’t. Instead, she packs the few belongings in her quarters into a single duffle, types her resignation letter, and sends it to Fury.

 

 

  
  
Stark laughs when he sees her at the tower. “You said ‘no way in hell.’”

Natasha shrugs. “You’ve got a nice place here. And I burned all my bridges with S.H.I.E.L.D. “


End file.
